It is with great reserve that I write now that the state Public Service Board granted Entergy yet another certificate of public good purchased with Entergy’s good ol’ corporate cash. Every decision involved millions to the state. In response to the decision, my thoughts led me to “next stop is shutdown.”

It has been many years since the reactor went a period of months without something significant occurring. Be it Entergy finding a radioactive leak or Entergy sitting on some event until the last moment. It is the secrecy of the atomic industry that is its double-edged sword. By many accounts Entergy behavior would be considered slimy and dishonest towards the state. That suspected pipe-bomb incident of November 2013, where Entergy did not expose it during the recent PSB hearings. The Vernon police suggested calling the bomb squad, yet Entergy’s hired security team tried and succeeded with a defusing of the suspected bomb using string and duct tape. With Entergy claiming that the 2007 spectacular cooling tower collapse as a “small leak in one cooling tower cell,” those of us who live near Vermont Yankee know with whom the state deals.

As we currently lack a state nuclear engineer, Entergy is even freer to flaunt protections of the locals and state land. I fully expect their site assessment offered to the state by December of 2014, to show only the bare minimum of contamination.

Truly what the PSB approved in approving the CPG could be paraphrased, “Look, for eight or 10 months we’ll let Entergy burn up the fuel they put in the reactor in 2013, the assumption is that Entergy will stop misleading the state, and that nothing so gross as to endanger anyone should occur before next year.”

When I heard the PSB decision, I was disheartened. And I thought, next stop shutdown. When it closes, it is our victory.